Archives
2003: Vol.
2, Numbers 1-12Read
past articles including:Series
on Leadership continued
Avoiding Dictatorship in a Free SocietyArt
and Politics Living
the Good LifeTeaching
Teens World
Peace in Less Than a Month?

from
the unpublished bookScience, Religion, and the Search for God: Bridging the Gapby
Richard Sidy

Even
though both science and religion may lead to "God-consciousness"
 albeit via different paths  that has not resulted
in their cooperation (nor should it justify their competitiveness).
They must be pursued together for the needed balance, safeguard,
and completeness. They must be intertwined for people to experience
the fullest measure of their potential, creativity, and service
to the world. Just as man and woman are needed to create a
child, so science and religion are needed to give birth to
the inner Self. Human beings are neither totally matter nor
totally spirit.

Scientific orientation organizes one's knowledge of the world.
It gives context and order to one's sense impressions. It improves
observation and reasoning, and it stimulates action for the
sake of material survival. The scientific mind gives the tools
for adaptation and creativity.

Religious orientation makes one able to adapt emotionally and
psychologically in order to develop relationships with others.
Happiness, love, and sensitivity to the needs of others are
considered essential qualities for social success. Religious
awareness refines the emotions and serves as a prime motivator
for creating unity, beauty, and dedication. It is from this
part of one's nature that goodwill may grow.

Scientific and religious orientation represent only two limited
human faculties. Nevertheless, these faculties are the ones
that dominate people's lives in terms of motivation and action
today. Religion appeals to the emotional nature. Through religion
a person worships ideals and seeks personal happiness, love,
and relationship with others and with something greater than
oneself. People frequently seeks their identity through religion
and seeks also psychological security and a basis for faith.
People of strong religious orientation can easily be manipulated
by clever and emotionally exciting people because they are
driven by feeling and by blind trust in those who can stir
their passions.

Scientifically oriented people are focused on the side of their
mental nature concerned with material existence. Such people
feel secure when they "know" something or are in
control of their day-to-day existence. These people feel that
what is real is provable according to laws of matter. A mental
materialist of this type can be controlled and manipulated
by logic and reason. This is dangerous when the mind is used
to satisfy pride, selfishness, and prejudice or when motivated
by desire or fear.

If only one of these orientations dominates a person's life,
the search for God or meaning will be one-dimensional. The
searcher will be like a wanderer in a house of mirrors. Eventually,
unable to find God, he will fall down and worship his own reflection.
The true search for God is multi-dimensional. Only with the
two wings of emotions and mind does one achieve the balance
needed to fly above the maze which one thinks is reality.